Our first concert of 2008 takes us to Italy. "The art of criticism is one that starts a crisis, that tears apart, that cracks the surface, splits the crust of language, undoes and dilutes the glueyness of everything that surrounds us" - thus wrote the French critic Roland Barthes, and nowhere is this more true than in one of the masterpieces of musical deconstruction, Berio's A-Ronne, a work that explores the very roots of the expressive potential of sound.

The hyper-expressivity of the Renaissance composer and murderer Carlo Gesualdo's music was a continuing source of fascination in the 20th century, as Stravinsky's completions of three motets show. Settings of the Psalms of David tie in with the season's exploration of the story of David and Absalon.